The Finitude of Forests
森林禁令
As the heavens open, the canopy offers scant protection from the downpour, so the orang-utans tear leaves off the trees to make pathetic little umbrellas to hold over their heads. It is an endearingly human gesture but, as a means of keeping dry, almost entirely futile. And it is not just the rain that makes these creatures seem so helpless. The relentless destruction of their tropical-forest habitat has endangered their entire species.
因头顶没有东西遮挡，每当下大雨的时候,猩猩们都缺乏足够的保护，所以这些猩猩们只能从树上扯下树叶来做成小小的保护伞用来遮挡他们的头。这是一个很可爱的类似人类的姿势，但是作为一种避雨的方式，它根本起不到什么作用。与此同时，并不只是下雨才会让这些生物像这样无助。人类对热带雨林猩猩栖息地无情的破坏已经使这些生物处于危险的境地。
In Borneo, in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, they can relax in a camp devoted to their welfare on the edge of the Tanjung Puting national park. But the park – 415,000 hectares of protected tropical heath forest and peat forest – is surrounded by oil-palm plantations. These orang-utans are refugees from forests cleared to make way for the plantations. Much as people like the creatures, and devotedly as conservationists work, the park is not enough to stem their remorseless decline. There is too much money in palm oil, as well as timber, coal, gold, zircon and the forest’s other vegetable and mineral riches.
在印度尼西亚婆罗洲岛的中加里曼丹省，这些猩猩得以在丹戎普丁国家公园边缘的营地里放松。但是该公园415000公顷受保护的热带森林和泥炭森林都是被棕榈种植园包围的。为了给棕榈种植园腾出地方，在这森林中避难的猩猩都被赶走了。尽管人们喜欢这些生物，并致力于保护它们的工作，但是这个公园并不能阻止猩猩的不断减少。棕榈油有很大的价值，这森林中的木材、煤炭、黄金、锆石、其他蔬菜和丰富的矿产也是如此。
Yet prospects for the orang-utans have recently looked up. Climate-change fears have drawn attention to the work forests do to sustain not just wildlife but the planet itself. The outlines of a scheme under which developing countries would be paid not to cut down trees has been agreed. Indonesia, for example, chafes at its reputation as the world’s third-biggest emitter of carbon (a ranking it disputes). It has promised to cut its emissions by 26% by 2020 or, if promised foreign cash actually materialises, by 41%. It will achieve this in large measure by reducing deforestation.
这些猩猩的前景已经可以预料。这些野生动物对气候变化的恐惧已经引起了人们对它们所栖息森林的注意，使人们不但保护野生动物本身，而且也保护它们所栖息的环境。所以人们提出了发展中国家必须为禁止砍伐树木而得到补偿的计划，该计划的大纲已经得到批准。以印度尼西亚为例，因对世界第三大的碳排放国家（该排名有争议）这个排名感到气恼，它已经承诺在2020年之前把它的碳排放降低到26%。它将会为实现这个目标在很大程度上减少森林砍伐。
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